Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful analysis of the enabling knowledge and subskills that students must first acquire to master a higher curricular aim. Nevertheless, this author contends that assessment for learning is an endangered species due to "instructionally insensitive" assessment of learning standardized tests. The author suggests that assessment "for" learning can be removed from the endangered species list only when states employ instructionally sensitive accountability tests capable of detecting the impact of first-rate teaching.